Fitness

pull-ups pull-ups pull-ups…

March 28, 2016

(Part 27 of 36 in series, 10,000 Reps Project)

The more I work on this stuff, the more I’m certain I’ll never be done; I’ll finish this challenge, but, “move, exercise” is just an infinitely deep rabbit hole.

The past two weeks, I’ve been working on trying to increase daily numbers. Pull-ups remain the limiting exercise, so it’s a game of how many pull-ups can I do in a day. Last week, every day, I did anywhere from 1 to 4 separate workouts. I did circuits with small pull-up sets to a total of 24 or 25 pull-ups in each workout. (Circuits of pushups, squats, handstands and seated/resting squatted. But that’s all easy stuff.) So the number of pull-ups on each day last week ranges oddly from 24 to 96.

My forearm continues to feel better. It’s now a sort of “remember to be careful about that”, rather than a feeling of impending doom if I do one pull-up incorrectly. I’m continuing to generally push hard with training, but I’ve no qualms about pulling up short if the arm bothers me at all.

I’ll pass 5,000 reps of everything this week!

I’m planning only 2 workouts this week. They will both be the largest number of pull-ups I’ve every attempted in a day. I’m aiming for 120 reps spread into four workouts. This week would still be a slightly “light” week since it’s only 2 out of seven days with workouts. The following week, I’m tentatively thinking of trying two days with 125 pull-ups in each day. I’ve never managed more than about 70 pull-ups in a single workout, so I’m tempted to try to do one big workout to see if I can do 120 pull-ups in something silly like 40 sets of 3.

If I can do 120 reps on workout days, I can still finish this whole challenge in time (but with literally just a few days to spare.) That seems too finely-planned, so I’m hoping to get up to 125 reps on the work days. This is definitely going to be physically challenging to make it by the end of 365 days.

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Ramping up pull-up numbers

March 20, 2016

(Part 26 of 36 in series, 10,000 Reps Project)

Quick check in…

Time to start ramping up to larger numbers. Need to be doing 120 pull-ups in a day if I’m going to be able to do work-rest-work-rest-rest the rest of the way to 10K before the deadline. So Monday I’m going to try doing 4 trips to the bar with 25 pullups (rather than 5 trips of 20), then I can add a fifth trip in coming days to move above 100 reps for the day. We’ll shall see. :P

200+ bar precisions is doable, so I think I’ll plan for a while to double up (two days’ reps, in one bar precision workout) since it’s easier to just go out less often and crank out numbers.

The ladder push-ups thing is still going. I think we’re within a week of it ending though (when the guy rotates home from deployment) so I’ll shift to something less weird-looking at that point.

Also planning ahead to keep Saturday and Sunday open this coming weekend.

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That which gets measured

March 18, 2016

(Part 47 of 72 in series, My Journey)

I’ve often heard, “that which gets measured, gets improved.” (…and you have to actually plan and work to realize improvements.)

Ten years ago, I saw 270 pounds on the scale and decided to start tracking. The first step was to work on getting proper sleep (followed by many more steps – but that’s another story.) I’ve been tracking health related things – weight, hours of sleep, dietary supplements, habits like stretching (whatever little projects I’ve had going on) for almost 10 years. This enables me to trot out amazing things like this when I’m looking for some inspiration…

Highest weight from memory: 270
Dec 2006, earliest recorded weight: 265
Jun 2012, started Parkour: 254
Jun 2014, ADAPT 1: 240
Aug 2014, rock climbing in Colorado: 232
Mar 2016: 221

Me, excited? You betcha!!

I’ve said it before: Find the smallest first step you can make towards your goal. Take that step. Tomorrow, look back and say, “well… I’ve come this far, may as well take the next step!” The hardest part of any journey is believing the journey is possible.

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Couple hundred at a time

March 14, 2016

(Part 25 of 36 in series, 10,000 Reps Project)

No major changes…

Last week I did two good work days. Did the pull-ups in 5 trips to the pull-up bar over five hours, and still doing very small sets 4×3,4×2 to get me 20 reps without over-working my forearm. I’m going to stick with that plan this week. For the last workout of this week, the numbers-game will work better if I can go up to 120 reps — so that will probably be 6 trips to the pull-up bar.

Also last week, I did the 200 bar precisions in one session. It’s not physically demanding, but more of an aerobic, get-in-the-zone and work on the quality of each jump. I may do that on Wednesday, simply to move the bar precisions to be on a different day from the pull-ups.

There should have been a third workout in last week — but I was away in NYC/Brooklyn for several days (the red blocks). Huge amounts of training, and huge amounts of “hey that’s noticably better” as a result of all this body-weight work. (Also, very little sleep and scattered eating — and, hey look, I think I’m sick again :/

Anyway.

Next week there are way too many “120”s on the workbook. That’s just me moving numbers down without bothering to go farther out and reshuffle numbers (yet). I just passed the “4,000”s mile post last week, and now — FINALLY — with these sized workouts, the “5,000”s milepost is in sight. At a rate of “120”s workouts, on a work-rest-work-rest-rest pattern of days, I can still finish this all in sane fashion before the 365th day.

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4,000

March 7, 2016

(Part 24 of 36 in series, 10,000 Reps Project)

I passed the 4,000 reps mile-post last week! Woo-HOO! 6,000 reps to go. Booooooo!

Last week was a Herculean effort on bar precisions to dig out of the hole I created. I did 700+ bar precisions in 3 days. It was deliciously decadent to have Saturday/Sunday off from this project. (I spent the days “off” by driving 3 hours to play/train with friends in upstate NY, driving home, and then going to regular Parkour class on Sunday. “Rest” may not be the right word.)

After last week’s “no plan” plan turned out well, I’m going back to my regurlarly scheduled work-rest-work-rest-rest 5-day pattern. I’ll do 100 reps of each, and my goal (over the coming weeks) will be to bring the pull-ups closer together. Currently, I’ve been doing ~100 pullups scattered in bunches of 8’s (as 3,3,2) or 7’s (as 3,2,2) spread through the day. I’ll work on making pull-ups into larger bunches of 9’s (4,3,2), 10’s and so on. The dream being to get to 10×10 pull-ups in one workout. My right forearm/grip is feeling better, but nowhere near 100%; so I’m keeping this as an odometer race, I’m not going anywhere near max rep’s on pullups until my forearm feels 100%.

A note about handstands: I’m going to keep doing them as 15-second stands. I was increasing the time per stand, but I realize now that I need more practice on the kick up and balance. So doing lots of shorter stands gives me lots of practice. I’ve managed a few instances of 5 seconds of complete free standing after kicking up onto the wall.

Next week, I’ll consider going to 120-rep workouts. That would bring the pace up sufficiently to finish 10k well before July 20. (Alternatively, I might invite friends out for a day of hurt to try to do something crazy like 500-of-each-exercise in one sprint to the finish, but that seems risky to me.) I would LOVE to wrap this up early so I can move on to other things.

For the long view, I sketched out doing 100-rep workouts on my 5-day pattern and it now comes up short at the one-year date on July 20. Astoundingly, it comes up exactly 500 reps short. (Except for pushups which are weird now due to that one-a-day ascending pushups thing that is going on unrelated to this 10k challenge. I’ll fiddle with pushups in a few weeks when that’s over.)

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Trying to get back on track

March 1, 2016

(Part 23 of 36 in series, 10,000 Reps Project)

Today I got a lot of numbers done. On the screengrab attached, I don’t have all of today’s numbers white… just a few more reps to do to finish today. But still totally slacking on the bar precisions. DAMMIT tomorrow I’m gonna get on it!!

The bar pre numbers for the rest of this week are gonzo… I know I can do them, just need to get in gear. Yellow blocks are “planned”, blue is “interesting mile post”, and red is “danger/training obstruction ahead”.

Saturday I’ll be away in upstate NY for some Parkour so I’ve cleared that day with zeros. But I suspect I’ll be tired Sunday — I’ll be driving home 3 hours, and there’s regular class in the afternoon. So I should clear Sunday as well. I’ll see if I can “bank” things. But “banking” 180 bar pre’s will not be easy.

Pushups are almost getting silly. We have this large group that converses each day with a Parkour friend who is currently in the army deployed to Afghanistan (in intelligence, not getting shot at.) Anyway, every day that he posts an “Afgan log entry”, we (most of us) do an increasing number of pushups. So you’ll see a hint of the 40, 41, 42, 43 etc in the pushups column. I just keep filling them in to make numbers, and I keep dropping/ignoring extra pushups done. So this Thursday would be 49, but I’m only recording the 45 I need to get to 4,000. Then Friday, Saturday and Sunday I’m likely to do another 50, 51 and 52 pushups. (Which I’ll ignore because I don’t need the numbers.) Anyway, weird numbers appearing in the pushups column. But it’s awesome to be like “meh. pushups. whatevs.” On Sunday, I did that 140 in 12 minutes and it was cake. Well, cake with nuts in it, but cake.  [ <– Deadpool reference :^]

Bigger picture, this means (if I can pull off this week) I only lost about 9 calendar days of slippage to my recent got-sick-and-then-became-a-slacker slide.

On the other hand, 720 bar precisions in the next 4 days… that’s probably a wee bit ambitious.

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Some pullups

About 6 months ago, I was unable to do a pull-up. These five are part of 70 on the plan for today. I’ve been doing pullups for weeks now withOUT warming up. Just walk over to the bar and haul. Why gloves? At the moment,…

Complexity… but, progress

February 23, 2016

Not including a spreadsheet snapshot this week, because this nonsense (last week, this week) will only make sense to my crazy brain.

As I described in my last update, my right forearm is the gating issue. I’ve been doing about 30 pullups per day, as sets of 2… just going to the bar every 20 minutes or so and doing two pullups, without my right pinky on the bar (releases the part of the forearm that is sore.) After a week of this, my forearm feels better (not 100% though), and I’m going to see how I feel doing sets of 3 so the odometer goes a little faster towards 10k.

Squats feel better now that I’m going down only to the point where I’d have to unload my heels. Solidly below parallel though, but without the bottoming-out sort of cheat-stop at the bottom. So these are probably the best squats I’ve ever been doing. Fifteen is straightforward, but I’ve been doing 7s and 8s randomly, just because I’m constantly going to the pullup bar to do a lousy 2 or 3.

Pushups are easy/fun.

For handstands, I’m doing 15-second stands because it’s awesome kickup and balance (against the wall, working on free-standing) practice.

Bar-precisions I’ve a pause on (all last week) because I ripped all my scaf apart last week. I spent all day saturday building scaf variations for some blog posts I’m doing. Today (probably tomorrow) I’ll go build something for rail precisions so I can get back on track with those (I’m 3×75 behind from last week.) But these I can just crank out, so I’m not concerned.

This week, going by my now-usual 3-days rotating thing, I’d have three 80 rep workouts, (a +5 bump as I ramp up for the last few months of hauling the mail). Instead, I’m going to not plan specific workouts — since I’m just doing things randomly through the day. I’ll spreadsheet the actual daily numbers for my next check-in. I’m a little nervous about not having specific planned workouts — but I’ve already been NOT doing the plan (last week) so may as well make a real plan (to just do what I can through the day) and keep an eye on the pace.

Bigger picture: This year-long goal is hands-down the hardest thing I have ever tried to do. Harder than losing weight, because the weight loss translates immediately to other results/benefits. Cranking on these activity numbers is just like staring at an odometer. …well, the pullups led to noticable improvements, but now even they’re more like staring at an odometer. Big set-numbers would be cool, but not until my forearm heals.

Onward!

(shuffles to the other room, does 3 pull-ups and a 15-second handstand against the wall… :)

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Crash, burn, reboot

February 13, 2016

Workout catchup…

…ok, so yes, I’ve been sick, but I’m still a slacker. This past week, I went to the doctor and got some good cough medicine to improve my sleep. Friday I was feeling better and coughing less, so I talked myself into going out and trying to finish the 30-reps, second-half of the workout I had split in half the previous week. So I got that done, but, ….brrrrrrrrr CHILLY!

Bar-precisions…

This is challenging again. My latest scaf setup has higher bottom bars. Used to be about 4 inches off the floor — scary as hell when you start out, but at the low height, it’s nearly impossible to hurt yourself if you slip long or short. New setup has the bars about a foot high, so this is again SCA-RY when you slip or don’t have your feet where you want them. Also, the current setup makes the bars rock-solid. So the old setup you could pre-load the bar flex just before jumping and then the landing bar is nice with just a bit of flex. Now, if you don’t do the legs correctly on the landing, it’s a bone-jarring bang when you land. Anyway, just yakking about an exercise that I’ve tweaked just a bit and is suddenly a fresh challenge.

Squats…

Hip ROM is one of my current “projects”. I’ve been working (desk-type work) on the floor in my living room using my coffee table as a desk. It’s like japanese-style living :P I’ve a couple yoga blocks to sit on as a starter-crutch and I cycle through cross-legged, one-straight, seiza, etc to work on hip ROM/flexibility. I usually run a 15 minute or so timer as I work and then shift to a couple of minutes of working on a flat foot squat. So doing body-weight squats is ever-so-slightly easier. I can take a bit-wider-than-shoulder stance and do a full squat to seated, but up into multiple sets numbers it starts to feel tight in the knees and then I let my heels unload… I’m thinking going forward I should keep the heels planted and just not squat all the way down. (Would also increase the difficulty on the descent as I’d have to do more negative work to stop before the movement limit. Probably also a good thing.) As soon as I unload the heels (even the slightest) I can feel that I’m no longer pushing the hip/ankle ROM like I could be. So I think just stopping before the last few inches of squat depth would yield more results in hip ROM. I can take a *wider* stance, but then it seems the knee pull/torque comes to my attention *sooner*.

Pullups…

These are definitely a “can do” exercise now. Getting better velocity/acceleration from the dead hang, and the consistency of height, and height in general are slowly improving. (I don’t dead hang most of them — I prefer to run up and down with the shoulders/lats remaining activated at the bottom.) I’m convinced the next step in my progression is to shave off a bit more dead weight. There’s 5, maybe even 10, pounds I can easily drop just by paying attention to carbs. So I’m off to try and get that in the coming weeks.

Related, two weekends ago I did my first ever “climb up” in perfect form. Basically, a fingers-over-top wall grab, feet on the wall, arms fully extended, pull up to max height and with the last of the momentum, hop your hands up on top of the wall, so the heel of you hand can bear weight. Haul your chest forward (low) over the top of the wall so you center-gravity moves into where you can push up through the dip part of the lift. Never managed the fluid hand transition before as a continuation of the pulling movement. It’s crazy difficult; the transition of hands is pretty easy, but if you do it and end up too low, you’re not able to tricep-push your way out of the dip (because the wall is in your way in front of you) …can make for a smash-your-chin/face train wreck if you mess it up. ANYWAY, my point is, pullups are really paying off in some of the functional movements that have been on my list for years. The grip-strength gains alone are crazy-useful.

Now for the problem: My right forearm is no longer sore/aching in general. Before this two-week-ish sick break, I could make the muscles ache just by making a fist and flexing my wrist pinky-side. That’s healed/gone away. But as soon as I start pullups, that exact muscle/area complains. I did 6×5 on Friday and it was a consistent “you better cut that out”. So again, losing a few pounds would help.

But my workouts require getting 70+ pullups in to make the 10k goal. I have the general strength/stamina to do it in an hour-ish workout, but it’s going to trash that right forearm if I go at it. So I’m going to experiment with a few things: 1) Banking pullups indoors; I have a smaller sized bar indoors versus the 1-1/4″ scaf pipe outside that is way harder to grip. So doing 5 or 10 reps, a few times through the day will allow me to vastly reduce the pullup reps when I do the “main” workouts. (Bonus, reduces how much I have to take my gloves off to do pullups outside… fr-fr-fr-fr-icking cold scaf pipes!) 2) Changing the grip; perhaps switch to the easier chin-up grip on one side. I’m not sure if its better to switch the right grip to not aggravate the muscles, or switch the left grip so I can do more work on the left to lessen the load on the right. I’ll also try removing pinky finger from the right grip since that corresponding side of the forearm muscle is the part that complains. 3) shift the hanging position (eg slight archers) to just load the left side more.

So, lots of work remains with pullups.

Worksheet/workouts…

Snapshot attached with usual-looking plans for next week. Bearing in mind that for the pullups, I’ll be working on banking reps in the day(s) before each workout.

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Setbacks are inevitable

February 6, 2016

Last weekend I trained exceptionally hard all weekend. Monday and Tuesday were tired, sore and broken-down recovery days (as exepected.) But by Wednesday, it was clear I was also sick. booo.

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So all week I did nothing other than some stretching/yoga-esque recovery work. (In addition to moving and reassembling the scaf on my patio.) All week I was sore, achy, and just felt like there was “no gas in the tank”.

By friday, it was pretty warm(-ish) and I was getting cabin crazy with the new scaf setup still unused. So I tried to go out and do one of the full workouts. It was a planned workout, just now about a week behind schedule. It called for 70s of everything. Well, my right forearm didn’t feel up to it, and I was just really low on energy. (I’m pretty confident the forearm pain is in the muscle, very close to the tendon, but not the actual tendon nor the attachment point.) So instead I made it into a really low intensity workout of just 40 reps… Just enough to put some numbers up on the board. I also mixed in some light work, like moving firewood (in small arm loads) and cleaning up the patio just to move around and get my heart rate up.

I’m feeling better today, so I’ll see what plays out. Some friends are coming over this afternoon to play on the scaf.

In my worksheet, I’ve just been “pushing” the workout numbers forward rather than spend time juggling all the rows in the future. Once I have some idea how long it’ll take to get back up to speed, then I’ll rework the schedule. So I’m not actually going to try to do all those every-day workouts that seem to be scheduled for next week. (All the columns are identical now, so I just snapped the pushups.)

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Haulin’ the mail

January 27, 2016

Whatever it is that you think you could NEVER do, figure out how to make a small step in the direction of your goal. Take that first step. Then look back and say, “well, now that I’ve come this far, I may as well go a little farther.”

I hope someone reads this, gets riled up, and thinks: “YEAH! I want to go for a walk!” …or a run, or a 5k, or swing on some bars, or walk a flight of stairs without gasping for breath, or lower my cholesterol, or be alive to play with my grand-kids. Whatever your goal is, GO CRUSH IT!

I remember when doing ONE STINKING PULLUP was inconceivable. Now I’m doing 70 — yes SEVENTY — per workout. The things that used to CRUSH me in class? …that stuff’s now my WARM-UP. Here’s a part of the worksheet that shows what’s going on with the pullups odometer. 3,000 reps is in the past (again, INCONCEIVABLE!) 4,000 is right on the horizon. Every workout through 4,000 is planned. A few more of the workouts are an identical, “all 70’s”, setup. Then, there are three weeks of bumping everything up +5.

In this screenshot, I’ve just completed January 27th/Day #190. The yellow block is the next planned workout; an exact repeat of today. There are more columns for the other activities, but now that all the activities’ numbers are in sync, they’re all the same. The pattern of workouts-to-rests is work-rest-work-rest-rest so that I have a regular, two-day rest over and over. Also, that’s a 5 day pattern so my workouts do not have the same weekdays — that’s really important to keep things from turning into “Monday’s suck” if I had a fixed weekly pattern. The double-rest also gives me a space to pull a workout one-day-earlier if I need to rearrange things, without making it into a killer two-days-in-a-row. (The things you think of when you do this for six months. D8 )

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If anyone wants the details: The workouts are a ~45 minute circuit, based around 5 sets. Pushups, squats and bar-precisions are 5×14 (that’s 5 sets of 14 repititions.) The pullups are 5×6 (5 sets of 6 reps) plus 8×5 (8 sets of 5). So I do a set of pushups, squats and bar-pre’s to get really warmed up, then do a set of pullups between each set of everything else:

SET 1
14 pushups
14 squats
14 bar-precisions

SET 2
6 pullups
14 pushups
6 pullups
14 squats
6 pullups
14 bar-pre’s

SET 3
6 pullups
14 pushups
6 pullups
14 squats
5 pullups
14 bar-pre’s

SET 4
5 pullups
14 pushups
5 pullups
14 squats
5 pullups
14 bar-pre’s

SET 5
5 pullups
14 pushups
5 pullups
14 squats
5 pullups
14 bar-pre’s

FINALLY
5 final pullups (but sometimes I just wedge this in somewhere above)
40 second handstand (against wall)
30 second handstand

When I do a +5 bump, I just turn all those “14s” into “15s” and the 5-set layout makes a tidy +5. For pullups I can add a separate set of 5 at the end, or turn 5 5s into 5 6s, whatever — I have to see what I feel like in a few weeks.

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6 months. 3,000 rep’s.

January 20, 2016

3,000 reps is in the bag, exactly 6 months into the challenge (on day #183.) Also, for the first time ever, all five activities match up exactly.

In a disucsion with some friends yesterday, the 70 pullups of today’s workout turned into a challenge: Do them in as few sets as possible. I only managed 7,5,6, 6,6,5, 7×5 — but that’s still the fewest-ever sets for 70 pullups for me. (I’ve been doing all sets-of-five, or trailing off to sets of 5.)

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This week has another workout planned on Saturday. I’m watching the snow storm coming, and I might be going into NYC for some parkour events on Saturday. So I may pull that workout forward to Friday. If I do that, I’ll also pull the following workouts forward to keep the ‘work,rest,work,rest,rest’ pattern intact. (Which, by the way, feels like it’s working well for me.)

Beyond that, I have all the workouts sketched out, with various +5 steps in reps, to get to 4,000 reps in another 5 weeks. At that point, the workouts would be 85 reps of things hopefully in a 5×17 arrangement for pushups, squats, bar-precisions and who-knows-what the pullup sets will look like. I’m currently doing the 65 seconds of handstand in two parts so it would be cool if I could keep the handstand to just 2 stands to reach the time for each workout.

Feels like a lifetime ago that I started this craziness! :D

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Motivated

January 19, 2016

I post this stuff partly in the hope that someone might find it inspirational, but mostly as way to keep myself accountable. I’ve been talking about this project for 6 months — tomorrow is literally the 6 month point — and there’s just no way I want to have to explain how/why I didn’t make the goal.

There are a number of people out there that I’m quietly using as inspiration. I’m going to try to take the time to thank them face-to-face in the coming weeks rather than name-drop them in a post. So moving on…

Here’s the status update from Monday’s workout. (I wrote this status update to my accountability partner on Tuesday[today].)

I did it. Monday was a whirlwind, so just now getting around to workbook updates and status.

Mega-crappy workout. Everything stacked against me; tired from lots of training and driving, 3 hours of sleep, my hands were super-sore from doing a ton of hanging/swinging/climbing on sunday… frickin’ cold outside… I taped up my hands and shoved ’em in leather work gloves (makes pullups even harder on the 1-1/4″ pipe because it’s slippery with gloves) and just went, “odometer numbers, forget everything else”… I broke into a zillion 6 and 7 rep sets of push, squat, bar-precision (to do 65 of each activity) and did a zillion sets of 3 pullups to get 70 reps of pullups. My grip was already sore and burnt-out from Sunday so it was all red-lining what my forearms would do.

BUT, I made my goal numbers of reps for the day.

Also, Tracy and I did our usual run this morning, very cold but managable. Now I need to sit around all day today and recover, I have like this head cold from being exhausted i think.

Anyway. I’m still on track for tomorrow’s workout for the 6 month mark and 3,000 reps.

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Onward!

January 10, 2016

Planning is really paying off…

While I was in Boston, my schedule shifted and I did my planned-for-Saturday workout on Friday. When I got home to my desk and looked over the bigger picture, I realized that shift enables me to pull the “3,000 reps milestone” workout forward so it falls exactly in the middle of the year — on day 183.

Just-completed week is filled in, and next week is laid out. A few really neat things are coming up in the next two weeks:

Monday: I finally get the slightest back-down on pullup counts since I started really working on them over 3 months ago. 80, drops down to 75 :P At the same time, everything else goes up to 60 reps. 60 bar-precisions is going to be so nice after having to crank out 85 for a few days (to bank rep’s) before I went to Boston.

Saturday: Another increment of activities, and the final back-down of pullups.

All of which is working toward a very special milestone that’s coming up in two weeks. :D For next few months I’ll be settling into a regular pattern of ‘work, rest, work, rest, rest’ with a regular +5-reps across the board as I work to build up the total numbers. All across the board, the “running rate needed” numbers is about 40, or 80 every-other day; So I’m still behind the pace I need to finish on time, but now I’m really getting close. The medium term goal is to do 100 rep’s of everything, and run that out to the end of the challenge.

Onward!

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Happy new year! Welcome to 2016…

January 1, 2016

Today was challenging: Up late for New Year’s Eve. Nothing major, but snacking late into the night, short on sleep, alcohol… all adds up on the negative side of the balance sheet. I did my usual warmup, started into things, and then had to stop for my back. I could just tell it wasn’t feeling 100% and that I would have been in pain before I was done. So I started over doing range-of-motion and a second, longer warmup — it took me forever to get up to speed. BUT, I’m very happy that I managed to pull out of the nose dive and get the workout done without injury!

So today’s workout is done as planned. Pushups, squats were 5×10 (numbers are creeping up, but this is still easy :), 2×25 handstands — even managed a few seconds free-standing at the end of each handstand, 85 bar precisions as 5×9 and 5×8, and a tedious 80 pullups as 5×12, and 4×5. I’m definitely stuck on a plateau with pullups! But with the holiday “weighted vest” currently holding me down, I’m hoping to move on in the coming weeks… Saturday and Sunday are rest days.

Next week has three workouts, on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday. That’s planned to work around my Tuesday and Sunday travelling days to/from Boston. Monday I’ll finish banking bar-precision reps so that I don’t have to do any while in Boston (since I can’t be 100% sure I can find a handy bar precision.) So the two workouts while I’m away are just pushups, squats, pullups and handstands… I know I can get those in. I’m thiking of going to Brooklyn Boulders (a huge climbing gym where the parkour group has scaffolding setup for indoor classes) on Wednesday; that would let me use the scaff for pullups and get my workout in. Saturday I’ll see what’s happening.

Here’s next week filled in:

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Tough week. That’s why planning leads to success.

December 27, 2015

This past week is filled in. Everything went as planned. Today was an exact copy of Friday.

Oof! My forearms are starting to get sore… the part where the grip tendon(s) attach at the elbow. I must make sure that doesn’t develop into tendonitis. I’m HEAVY from holiday eating, tired from messed-up sleep, etc. so this week’s workouts were tough. BUT, this was all expected and planned for, so I’m treating it like an expected plateau, smiling proudly and moving onward.

This coming week has several big changes…

I’m switching to a “workout, rest day, workout, rest, rest” pattern to give me a two-days-in-a-row recurring break. All the way into MARCH I’m going to have to be ramping up all the excercises so I’m going to need that double-day recovery break in the pattern. This week, Monday/Tuesday are MUCH-needed rests, and that makes Saturday/Sunday rest days too — so this week is going to be an easy week.

The following week I have January 5 thru 9 marked red because I’ll be in Boston. After a bit of juggling, I’ve arranged for the Tuesday/Sunday travelling days to NOT be workout days to avoid having to do 80 pullups in a train. I’ve two workouts planned while in Boston. I’m not 100% sure I can find a suitable bar-precision I want. So, to be 100% sure I can get the reps in, I’m going to take the 110 bar-pre’s that would be in those two workouts, and bank in the next three workouts. Thus the inflated 85,85,85 count on the bar-pre’s coming up. They’re not physically hard any more (just technically challenging) so there’s no probably cranking out those reps to ensure I don’t fall behind in the Jan 5-9 week.

Finally, if I stick to the plan, on day 184 — just a smidge after the mid-way point of the challenge — I hit 3,000 on the final rep in the workouts, AND sync-up all the activities. That will be a red-letter-day :D

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2,000 pullups

December 21, 2015

As I mentioned in the previous post, today’s workout included 80 pullups, and the last pullup was number 2,000. What a milestone! They’re not the greatest pullups – there’s some kipping and flailing at the end – but, build it, lather, rinse, repeat. 16 sets of five pullups is a LOT of pullups. I now have to do that, every other day for a couple weeks to finishing digging pullups out of the hole to catch up with the number of rep’s on the other exercises.

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